irishboyinlondon

Interesting short case study by Sustrans that highlights how a lack of detailed local travel information can lead to retailers being misinformed about how their customers reach their shops.

Sustrans found that most traders greatly overestimated how many of their customers use cars and underestimated how many walked, cycled or used public transport.

Worth reading!

Over ten years ago, retailers in the Austrian city of Graz were asked how they thought their customers travelled to the shop, and shoppers were then interviewed to determine the reality. The results were fascinating: retailers hugely overestimated the importance of the car, and underestimated how many of their customers walked, cycled and used public transport (1).

Sustrans’ researchers have now replicated the Graz study on two neighbourhood shopping streets in Bristol.  Once again, we found that retailers overestimate the importance of the car. We also found that they overestimate how far their customers travel and underestimate how many shops each customer visits.

These findings have real significance for business planning – as well as land use and transport.  It is traditional for retailers to pursue more car access and parking, and to resist measures to promote walking, cycling and public transport use – although pedestrian shopping areas tend to be commercially most successful. Our findings suggest that retail vitality would be best served by traffic restraint, public transport improvements, and a range of measures to improve the walking environment.

An interesting report from the now defunct Sustainable Development Commission!

Fairness in a Car Dependent Society, finds that vulnerable groups not only travel less than other people, they carry a greater burden of the costs of other people’s travel, including air pollution, noise, traffic danger, injury and crime. Other findings include:

• The richest 10 per cent of the population benefit from receive four times as much public spending on transport as the poorest 10 per cent
• Children of the lowest socioeconomic groups are up to 28 times more likely to be killed on the roads than those of the top socioeconomic group
• The most common cause of death for children aged 5-14 years is being hit by a vehicle
• Those in the top income quintile travel two and half times as far as those in the bottom income quintile and three times as far by car
• In the lowest income quintile, less than half of adults hold a driving licence and less than half of households have a car whilst half of all households in the highest income quintile have two or more cars. For those claiming income support or jobseeker’s allowance, car access figures are even lower – almost two thirds do not have access to a car and a licence to drive it
• Car owners in the lowest income quintile spend 25 per cent of total household expenditure on motoring (by comparison spending 10 per cent of income on household energy bills is defined as ‘fuel poverty) People living in rural areas now see car ownership as a necessity and around 90 per cent of households have at least one car. The cost of motoring was found to account for 60 to 100 per cent of the additional income calculated as being required for rural dwellers to meet a minimum socially acceptable standard of living commensurate with urban dwellers
• SDC estimate that the total cost of our level of car dependency significantly exceeds the £48 billion per annum in taxes and charges on UK road users.

The report is recommending a new approach to transport policy in line with the Coalition Government’s commitment to fairness as one of its three guiding principles. The Commission’s recommendations centre on its Transport Hierarchy for policy makers, calling on policy-makers to prioritise reducing the demand for transport; encouraging more sustainable modes of transport and improving the efficiency of existing modes of transport over increasing the capacity of the transport system.

An interesting article by Laura Laker of the Guardian examining the controversial question - when should we take the lane? 

Ask any urban cyclist about “taking the lane”, and even if they haven’t heard of the term, they have probably done it. Although widely regarded as safe practice, this often gets negative responses from other road users. So who is right?

Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

Interesting opinion piece on bicycles in the New York Times written by an American living in Amsterdam!

As an American who has been living here for several years, I am struck, every time I go home, by the way American cities remain manacled to the car. While Europe is dealing with congestion and greenhouse gas buildup by turning urban centers into pedestrian zones and finding innovative ways to combine driving with public transportation, many American cities are carving out more parking spaces. It’s all the more bewildering because America’s collapsing infrastructure would seem to cry out for new solutions.

Geography partly explains the difference: America is spread out, while European cities predate the car. But Boston and Philadelphia have old centers too, while the peripheral sprawl in London and Barcelona mirrors that of American cities.

More important, I think, is mind-set. Take bicycles. The advent of bike lanes in some American cities may seem like a big step, but merely marking a strip of the road for recreational cycling spectacularly misses the point. In Amsterdam, nearly everyone cycles, and cars, bikes and trams coexist in a complex flow, with dedicated bicycle lanes, traffic lights and parking garages. But this is thanks to a different way of thinking about transportation.

The Telegraph reports on the outcome of a recent trial relating to a cyclist who was assaulted by a motorist in Kent.

The attack had been captured on camera by another cyclist and posted on YouTube in a bid to identify the perpetrator. Through this the police were eventually able to identify and track down the attacker! 

The judge fined the attacker £400 with £100 compensation to be paid to the cyclist. Whether or not this was adequate is debateable, but more importantly, when sentencing the District judge said:

“Cyclists are very vulnerable and they feel exposed and feel threatened when a car comes too close to them.

“Car drivers need to respect cyclists and understand that.”

A fear of traffic is frequently reported as one of the primary reasons why people dont want to cycle.  Here in London (and the UK) - it is clear that drivers for the most part fail to recognise that cyclists are more vulnerable road users. If you go to Copenhagen or Amsterdam, drivers are courteous to cyclists in areas where they share the road, slowing down and giving them right of way.  In the UK it can feel on many occasions that drivers are making a direct effort to stay as close to you as possible and make you fearful.

Disappointingly legislators and highway teams in London condone this attitude through policy and highway design, failing to provide segregated cycle facilities, narrowing cycling paths or obliterating them altogether and by refusing to adopt a road user hierarchy, as is the case with the current conservative led London Assembly.

Without a significant change of emphasis, more education and active, committed campaigning by the government, a notable shift to bike use is unlikely to take place.